 Hello, hi, so bear with me, I did a talk last year at E&W and I was a bit nervous and I talked too quickly. Someone heckled me from the back so back people please feel free to do that if I talk too quickly. So this is a story combined with another explanation of our project that I'm going to review to install tomorrow. So it's kind of a bit hard to make some lessons learned into that. So I'm going to start with how I got there. When I was at school I was really interested in electronics, I don't really know quite how I got into that. I used to, this was a primary school, I used to go to an adult union class and do an electronics course, it was really basic, my dyslexiae didn't really help, so I don't know how much I really learned but it was enough to have people my age who were interested in something. I guess it was before I went into act spaces and things we have now. Then I didn't really tell that forward to it but I wasn't hugely successful at school in scientific areas and things like that. I was more creative, more design based so when I went to college I studied graphic design. Then again at university I studied something that was kind of hybrid graphic design and media because I was kind of thinking I might study, I might have won a couple of other classes but it turned out to be for me anyway the most uninteresting thing I've ever done. Whilst I was there I started experimenting and going back to this kind of idea of buying out electronic stuff. I discovered Instructables.com and I started looking up how to do stuff. This was really before Arduino was really kicking off and so it wasn't immediately obvious which microcontroller I should use. So I quite coincidentally used an apple chip, a simple 18 tiny chip and I made a little chapter about control using some instructions and then reposted that and that kind of gave me the kick I guess to really want to keep doing this again and again. And so about a year later I took part in a beginner's Arduino workshop. This is the 2000th I looked at it. And around the same time I went to the museum of Monnat in New York and that's where I kind of these things started to, the roots of the story that I'm going to tell you come from. So since then I've graduated, done masters and all along I've been doing things that I should be doing, also doing these other kind of distractions if you like. One of the things I saw at the museum of Monnat was one of these old fashioned departure boards that you see at an airport or train station. And there's something about it that kind of really lashed on for me and I wanted to make one. So I asked the company that made them, I researched and found out how much it would cost to make 140 and perhaps for it was a display and they said about €40,000 for this particular one. So that was, I wasn't going to happen. But you didn't kind of see that, that blurry picture the guy just took on his way to responding my email was enough to sort of set something in motion in my head that I wanted to do. And kind of crazy, this was in my final year at university. I decided to try and make the whole thing myself, which was moving because I had no idea how I was going to do it, but I guess being naive about how complicated this problem was going to be I actually decided that I could achieve it. And well actually one, a model did really work, as you can see that's the server on the side of anyone that knows what I'm trying to know, but that's not quite the reason it really worked. It had been hacked to continue circulation and if you start to think about it you could never fit enough letters side by side. And hopefully another way of doing it on the top of BlikTact isn't the best way forwards. But it introduced me to some ideas. I've never knew what a laser cutter was and to this day I think laser cutter is probably the most useful tool that a maker can have. Two new printers don't even compare to the laser cutter, at least for me. So this was the original design and looking back at it now I think it's kind of again shows kind of a willing and naive curiosity into how I can make things, but I don't know, it seems kind of stupid now. It was made with five more thick pieces of perspex which I thought would be too thin and turn out to be way too thick. And then it was made with these kind of, I looked around at what other flip displays were used. You see those flip clocks on eBay that are super cheap. I kind of destroyed one of those. So these are the kind of parts that I designed and cut out and this was the kind of 3D model I made of it. And you can see it's sort of super botched. I first grafted a kind of and I sort of tasted that. I hope it gets me right at least. So this was I say when I kind of discovered the laser cutter and this was kind of a real tiny point because it meant I could turn ideas into reality without having to learn complicated or seemingly complicated and hard to access tools like band saws and things like that. And things like that that kind of was a little bit afraid of. I could design something in a software package like Illustrator which is what I was used to and have it maybe in a few minutes. And interestingly this seems to be an approach that other people have taken as well. If anyone saw Ben Hex talk he was a graphic artist and uses this CNC and his laser cutter regulating his show doing the same thing using Illustrator to design this. So I had a pile of parts and kind of glued them together. You can see it's not even straight. It didn't work very well. It fell apart a few times. But then version 2 came on. I had an exhibition so I made another one. This time it was a bit of a plastic see-through so I could actually see into it because it's a prototype. Why don't you make it a finished version and add more time. And I realised that having a way to bolt it on the outside was not going to work so I put it inside which introduced me to the idea of having some gears. And again not being an expert on that either. If anyone wants to use the Adobe Illustrator you know there's a star tool. You can tell it how many punch you want so I did that and then I used some circles to cut the sharp bits up. Apparently that's not how you make gears because it didn't really work. And also there's this thing in the laser cutter called Kerf which I've never heard of either. Apparently the plastic that you cut isn't exactly the same size as the thing that it was cut. I'm not sure if that's out of it anymore. I assume that it's not a very good plastic glue either. As you can see it kind of frosted all the plastic which is an interesting effect. And also it's not a very good way of sticking metal to plastic either. But that seems like the most logical approach from what my upbringing was. Because I have not experienced any of these other tools. So you learn them quickly when you make stuff I guess. So it was an exhibition and by the time the exhibition I don't have a picture of what it looked like at the end. I guess I wasn't that happy because it completely destroyed itself after a week of rotating one unit. So this is some of the stuff I did in Illustrator but just getting better at understanding it in my head. And at this time I was just doing ball and 2D but later you can see here this third version. This is quite close to what it's like now. I've started using Sketchup to take those part pieces, extrude them through millimetres and assemble them in virtual space to see if they actually connect together. So this was a more recent one. And so to connect those gears I'm going to click. There's a chat tool that I've swendled who is Canadian chat who does a lot of woodwork. He has created a piece of software that actually creates proper gears. So if you're ever looking to make some laser cut gears, I think there's something going on in speed speed because the package is at $200. So this is using some proper gears and adding mounting parts to give it a really strong fix to the motor. So that was something I learned. I also learned that kind of the way this whole thing works is you've got two circular discs which rotate my axle. Except for that to kind of flip forwards so many units and we'll see that by the end. That they would sort of twist in different ways to each other. So they would kind of fall out because of this because they're not kept completely parallel at all times. So I designed this kind of unit that would hold them exactly the correct distance and prevent them twisting. So this is the most recent version. So throughout this I've been blogging quite a lot of my own blog about what other people have done in the past. A lot of people have found, especially as you are old units, and taking them apart and trying to figure out how to be reversed in the future. I've been blogging a lot so I've kind of both become one of the main things you can go to if you search online for split cap displays or something that's tight. So it's kind of an archive of what I've been doing but what other people have. People might be a couple of times a week sometimes asking, where can I buy these? Can you make them for me? So I've kind of cornered the market on homebrew split cap departure boards if that's the thing. So the company came to me about two months ago as they regularly do so how can we make this? I turned up for a change there based on where I am so I was actually able to go meet them in our chat. I'd been intending to work on the project a bit earlier this time so I thought this would be a good opportunity to actually see if it went anywhere because in the past it's never really has. So this Sunday I'm going to be meeting a hero who unfortunately needs to go to work to put 10 of these into a shop window on Reading Street for the Royal Institute of British Architects windows. It's kind of an annual event where they commission architects to create shop windows and they're commissioning me in terms of building these. So this is just fancy renders that we give for the client. If anyone's interested in how this actually works I'll explain about what I'm going to talk in the past on my own. I don't spend too much time. I do want to talk a little bit about how it works on this though. I kind of broke things down into the modules so there was the hardware side, the mechanical side just in here and then there was the electronics and the software and so I was kind of working on these all in parallel so the hardest challenge was the hardware because it's what I'm really used to and coming from that level design background I had a big impact on the programming but the electronics has also been a challenge and I think I made a really smart decision trying to break it down. This is a really old drawing I did quite early on but I had this idea of having essentially a micro controller on every single unit rather than having to control as the old fashioned ones would have done maybe a whole row of 15 or 20 at a time which keeps the kind of complexity of the code quite simple. So you've got a serial communication that's just spurting out all the words that you want to display on the screen. It receives those and processes that tells the motor to move so many steps from where it was previously and hope that it doesn't miss any. And that's why they were so inaccurate because there's not a great deal of feedback. The ones that I've got recently they don't have any feedback either but more modern devices would have had that kind of hoon position if you like. And then you can see here that there's some kind of main controller to the side and then three of the modules for example. And to kind of do that communication like this thing called RS485 which is if you're interested a way of talking to multiple devices at the same time on the same bus. So it's kind of like serial port rather than Arduino but multiple devices can listen in and it uses something called differential pair communication. So basically it's more resistant to noise so you can use it along the distances. And a bit of a circuit board operated it and tested it and it worked the first time which was super soft to that. In this process I kind of learn quite a lot of things and one of them is obviously to process that early, it's right after. Give things a little while, come back to them later because you sometimes miss some states. And to break them into smaller challenges. And this is the one that I kind of tell the students at the university that I work at quite often. Which is moving in any direction to further understanding still. We often find students, especially in their final year, will sit there for weeks, seven weeks on end saying that they're doing something. Really what they're doing is sort of, it's a sort of procrastination but it's not, it's kind of a lack of confidence perhaps to go in any direction. So if you kind of can bear with this analogy a bit cool, lost in the desert and you don't know where you are at your devices and all you can see is genes around you, then the best way in this kind of analogy to find your way home is to start timing one of those. And if it's the wrong way then you go back up the other side and figure out your way home and that's kind of one of the key things I've found. And then with the RSV-85 as you can see here, I was having some real trouble and I thought, I blame myself, I thought I made something wrong, I checked it and checked it and checked it. And then it wasn't until I spent some money on a microscope that I realised that there was a problem. So I didn't have an aspect, so I didn't have access to one. So if you're doing the electronics, I really recommend buying these, you can get them pretty cheap, £14 for a reasonable one. So that's kind of the end of my ramble, but I just wanted to show you what it is I'm doing or what I've done. So this is 10 of them in a row. Now you can kind of imagine this is a shot front of the window on one side and the other on the doorway between. So there's five each. This is just a message we sent to one of our colleagues that was on holiday at the time, but it's a nice little demonstration of it in action. There's no sound when it's a promise, because there's colour eyes. Is it working? It was about characters, obviously. Enjoy your holiday. Tom and Sheen. Although somebody who doesn't understand what I'm saying is, so it gives a question mark. But that was when we saw that working and putting out messages to me. I don't think the alphabetically understood because I'd spread back. This was about two weeks ago, I'd spread back about five or six years working on this. On and off, not continuously, obviously. It's given me a really proud moment for me to be able to see something that I'd gone from just about being able to make some melodies flashing an Arduino to making something that does what I think is actually a really complicated thing to do. So that's kind of my story. I just wanted to play a bit of a couple of things. I also distracted myself in the meantime with the other in the castle in the main square, which was filmed 15 November. It doesn't mean that city, it's interesting. Also, I've heard of a major space with some other people in South London. So, if you're in that area, you can pop in when you're going home, just in the presence of a fine in summer. And if you want to find out more about the kind of commercial work that I do, or my blog Tolinch.predicade for my work, and Unendomain.predicade for my blog, which has all of the kind of stuff I mentioned before and that's it. Does any of you have any questions if you do? Sit up your hands and I'll get you on the mic and then we'll put one over here. Hey, Tom. I'm just curious. Do you ever go back to the company that produces the very fancy, expensive ones and recommendations to have a look at how it looks differently or not as an event of our product? Sort of. I've never answered them, but I don't think they give me their fans, because there aren't many companies that make these in the world and they're one of a few. But I guess the word. My blog has been kind of a really on-going documentary. Some of it is the stuff that I have now. I don't know what I'm actually wearing now. But I kind of become known and it becomes my death reference for this particular product. And people think I'm a little obsessed, maybe, but they often point out in this evening. So one of my housemates, for example, went to a bar in London and saw another one took a picture and emailed it to me straight away. When I was on holiday in Belgrade, they had a lot of those around. Some of them were kind of dying, so you could sort of see them peek inside. I've seen inside them plays through kind of roundabout answers. And if anyone was up into Brighton Station, they may or may not have noticed that there used to be one there. And that was taken down last summer and I got a good chance to have a bit of a closer look when that's taken down. It's currently stored in its own yard. I think it will relate it and throw a kind of train in spotters type of thing, whatever. But anyway. So yeah, I've seen inside of them and have to be able to kind of be inspired and look at them. So yeah, through sort of looking at the images of them, I can kind of see different ways in which you can do these things. Look at that. Reference is being issued. Any other questions? Oh, we've got one here. First of all, have you tried finding the same hand this place? Yeah. Again, I kind of go back to the one in Brighton that I've been pursuing for about a year and a half with, I think it was Southern or South East, I can't forget, but whoever. And they kind of had agreed to let me have some of it and then these other guys came along and they wanted to preserve the whole thing. So I kind of, between them, we kind of agreed that was fine. And I'll try and help them if I can. Although I don't think my expertise really applies to restoring old ones. So yes, I looked, I had an option for some from New York, but because they didn't really want any money for them, but shipping them very heavy, just for one of them, was really worth it. And this isn't much of a photo, so I kind of got what I needed to. And most of the ones you'll find, just as play destination, if you don't display that to us, they're quite long ones. So unless it was a display destination or somewhere near home, you probably wouldn't have much interest in quite a few phones. And I think you can keep these ones after the internet, so. Your part of the question was, do you not find a system in the second one just for each other? Is it expensive? Yeah, they're now expensive. You could use a density motor. I've looked at this, some of them do use density motors. Some of them use solar motor and ratchet mechanism. It is expensive, but I mean, these cost about £200 each to make, and that's just because the inefficiencies are making them the way it is made. It's made on a leather part of the plastic, but all these things are quite expensive. Parts, £10 a bill of materials of 200 is massive. That's about £10 each. Yes, yes, it's expensive, but there's no way of doing that. OK, you've got all this in here. More on that for the original time. I'll do your major cutting for three. Thank you. Just to cost them a few minutes. Today's a good project. Thank you. Mark, another question? Do you have any other possessions? Oh, it's not an obsession of mine. It was a project I did. I mentioned what my talk at E&W was about, which was an open source vacuum cleaner. I won't really go into that. No, it was by another long talk. I like to focus on projects. I think the maker fair and the maker space might be a bit much better, so I probably won't take on another thing that's big for a while. Sorry? Yes, you will. Yes, I will. I'll try not to. Not really any others. I spent this much. I spent this project I worked on. I'm anytime safe to work. Five years spent on this project has put a lot on time. Four questions, anyone? So I wonder what more? Which are we going to learn all? Unfortunately not. They're pretty fragile and they're actually going to the installation this day tomorrow, so I didn't want to damage it just beforehand. But if you're in London for the fall of September, they're going to be in our shop window. It's Jack's Bate. It's in regional street London, so if you want to, you can go down there. And maybe if I do another talk at some point, I'll try not to bring on another one. Sorry about that. We've got lots of questions. Any more? No? No, we only have a couple more. What are you going to be using for that 45% of each of the individual boxes? Sure. I went on to process having it. I used it now, we know. First of all, running an albino, bootloaded, and now three to eight. But instead I'm using, I'll come over to the website. There's this, I call the components they do. They're basically important stuff, from field extreme. So I've got some kind of knock-off, albino, primonies. Spark-off primonies. And I made a custom. It needs to be there on the back, but you just plug that in and knock-off the easy driver as well. And so that's what's kept the price down otherwise you'd be looking at it. And that may be too hefty for the whole thing instead of a hundred. Right, I'll see you at Gwyn again. Gwyn, Gwyn, right, no more questions. So thank you very much for the minutes.